Kirklees to benefit from NHS investment

Alex Miller

A new system of sharing health records is being rolled out, and the people of Kirklees are set to benefit.

NHS England is pumping millions of pounds into a partnership covering Yorkshire and the Humber – including Kirklees – that will make information about people instantly available to those involved in their care.

Dubbed Local Health and Care Record Exemplars, or LHCREs, the partnerships have been created to reduce unnecessary patient tests and improve safety through better working between hospitals, GPs and social care.

The latest roll-out in Yorkshire/Humber and the Thames Valley follows Greater Manchester, Wessex and One London, which were announced last month.

New partnerships will each receive up to £7.5 million over two years.

The spread of the various LHCREs covers more than 40% of the population of England.

Dr Simon Eccles, NHS England’s chief clinical information officer for Health and Care, said the new local systems could save lives.

He added: “The five partnerships will give health and care staff better and faster access to vital information about the person in their care, so they can determine the right action as quickly as possible, whether that is urgent tests or a referral to a specialist.

“At the moment, in many local areas GPs and other care professionals are often not able to access crucial patient information quickly if it is held in another part of the health service sometimes having to rely on post or fax instead.”

Each Local Health and Care Record Exemplar is made up of either one or multiple Sustainability Transformation Partnerships (STPs).

The new partnerships will also work to better understand demand for local services and to plan effectively for future demand.

In May the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) came into force in the UK, giving the public more control over how their personal information is used and the Government introduced a new national opt-out, offering people a choice on how their confidential patient information is used for research and planning.